Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dough portion control machine for flour and similar materials, particularly for pizza-restaurants, bakeries etc., comprising a dough feeding hopper, dough extrusion means and dough weight and/or dimension selective control means.
Now days pizzas, bread portions and similar are requested for weights up to 1.5 lb. Consequently a plurality of machines adapted to the production of a plurality of pizzas dough portions and bread dough portions are offered to the market of pizza-restaurants, bakeries and so on.
A known machine has been constructed to form dough portions from about 0.1 to maximum 0.7 lb. That machine includes a dough portions weight selection device comprised of an outlet cross section funnel adjustment, which is placed downstream with respect to a screw feeder. A motor driven rotating blade is started across the path of travel of the dough portion through the screw feeder in response to the activation of the motor by a sensor. An operator can independently select different dough portion weights.
Should dough portions of different weight be required, substantially higher than 0.1-0.7 lb., further more sophisticated, expensive and cumbersome machines are necessary.
A solution is provided by modifying the above mentioned machine so that it may be used to prepare dough portions from 0.1-0.7 lb. to 0.7-1.5 lb. The main advantage of this solution are (1) a reduction in the amount of space needed, xe2x80x94i.e., the reduction in the number of different machines needed, and (2) a substantial cost reduction due to the reduction in the number of different machines needed.
The problem is solved by a machine according to the present invention, which is characterized by extrusion apparatus adapted to co-operate with dough cutting apparatus and with extruded dough portion control apparatus. The extrusion apparatus is adapted to produce, together with the cutting apparatus and with the control apparatus, a dough portion which could be substantially heavier than 0.7 lb. The machine of the present invention includes an extrusion apparatus that is interchangeable with further extrusion apparatus on the same machine structure for dough portion production which could be lighter than 0.7 lb., for instance within a range of 0.1-0.7 lb. The interchangeability of one extrusion apparatus for another extrusion apparatus provides the advantage of providing a machine adaptive to prepare a dough portion comprised within a range of 0.1-1.5 lb. and even heavier.